TASK 1
Independent living can basically be defined as “ability of an individual to take their own decisions and to make various choices to live their lives according to their own guidelines”. To live an independent life, an individual should be well fulfilled with financial resources, adequate information and good support system from friends and family. Users of social and health care services are the senior citizens that are living independently, disabled children and aged people as well as individual working people. In the given case, Sally is one such person who is an appropriate user of health and social care services.
Assistive technology means various technological and social gadgets that are to be used by individuals for independent living. In this case, Sally has used personal digital assistant gadget that helps her memory plus she can also use internet facility through that and she also gets psychological help in inviting herself with the rest of the world (Cook and Polgar, 2014). The given case describes that Sally who is suffering from many diseases, being an independent person, the assistant technology that is provided to Sally are advising and counseling from various psychologists along with therapist, socialist and even assistant technology specialist. She was also given with social support for finance, work and personal life decisions. Till 4 years, she was regularly being treated by the specialist and with this, she was provided with hand held personal digital assistant (PDA) who is being called as pocket coach as he helped in improving her memory status. Basically, this device worked as it provides single click facility through which she was able to recognize which tasks she has to do the next (Makrides and et. al., 2007). Thus, in this way, technology is used to support health and social care services to the independent person.
Major barriers of assistive technology within the context of social and health care services are, difficulty in using technical gadgets, cost incurred to use all this services could be a problem, to use all this technology a person has to be provided with training for using the same, maintenance and technical breakdown of these technologies and other related can prove to be a major barrier for use of technology (Nicklin and McVeety, 2001).
By regulatory meeting different specialist, she could feel irritated and this in turn could discourage Sally to take help of assistant technology. She might face financial crisis for the services that are being provided by social and health care because being an independent person, it is not possible that she can afford all these services. She might get difficulty in using gadgets which are being provided to her for the improvement. If the PDA gets break down or if requires any maintenance then being an independent person, it is possible that Sally could not do anything and then it could create the problem for Sally as well as she might return to her previous condition (Syson and Bond, 2010). It is also possible that few social needs are not being able to meet or are inadequately being made.
Most important thing through which it could reach perfection will be by providing after services of treatment or care. In this case, if the Sally is being provided with help after her overall treatment then this would help her lot to recover easily. Any independent living person also requires the moral support, friendly touch in their treatment in spite of just medication and technical treatment. If Sally is being given with such support, it can help her to recover more easily (Johnson and et.al., 2007). Proper team of trainers could be arranged by this social and health care service provider so that those who are unaware of such technologies can also use these techniques. Thus, these are some barriers and solutions which could help social and health care centers to improve their